Heathrow Airport expansion: Now comes the hard part

At last, at long, long last, the Government has brought to an end more than 50 years of dithering and finally fired the starting pistol on a new runway for the southeast of England.

That will be the overwhelming response from the majority of UK businesses. But now comes the hard part.

Any building will inevitably be held up by years of legal battling over noise and environmental considerations; a judicial review of the Government's decision will doubtless be sought by opponents of a third runway at Heathrow.

Then there will be the inevitable haggling as Heathrow's owners seek to compulsorily purchase some 750 homes that will have to make way for the new runway.

Among those homes that will be going, along with what is left of the village of Harmondsworth, is British Airways, Heathrow's biggest customer, whose head office will be demolished.

The cost of these compulsory purchases is likely to be around £1.5bn - around £1bn more than it would have been a decade ago or so.

Then, when the diggers finally move in, there are likely to be more rows. BA is anxious that the new runway will be a 'gold-plated Taj Mahal' and that landing charges will have to double to pay for it all.

It, and other major Heathrow users, such as Virgin Atlantic, will be looking to the Civil Aviation Authority, the regulator, to extract promises from the owners of Heathrow.

BA, now part of the larger International Consolidated Airlines Group, also has the sanction of switching flights away from Heathrow to other airports such as Dublin and Madrid, courtesy of its parent's ownership of Aer Lingus and Iberian.

Then there is the Gatwick question.

Gatwick fought a strong campaign to be allowed to build a second runway and it had a good case: the airport is by far the busiest single runway airport in the world and several assumptions about Gatwick in the Government-backed Airports Commission chaired by Sir Howard Davies, which unequivocally backed expansion at Heathrow, have already come to pass.

For example, Gatwick is already handling the number of passengers annually that Sir Howard assumed it would not be handling until 2030.

Gatwick has also proved adept at improving its service since it was bought by Global Infrastructure Partners following the break-up of the old BAA; expect calls for it to be allowed a second runway to resume swiftly.

However, for most businesses, Tuesday's decision will be one of relief. It is often forgotten that, during all the debate over passengers and the need for Britain to have more air routes to growing economies like China, some 40% of all traffic at Heathrow is cargo.

It is subject to the same delays and hold-ups as business and holidaying travellers - hold-ups that do just as much, if not more, harm to the UK's growth potential.

Those hoping to rebalance the UK economy, Theresa May and Philip Hammond foremost among them, know that, if Britain is to export more goods, a third runway at Heathrow is probably essential. As, in time, will be second runways at Gatwick and at Birmingham Airport.